The House of Wayland

cs 439 ."Uf3B EobehtWaylen. ofJDei'ize&. t THE Wayland House of i i-O/vujcO Cc/o_o/JLCvu LONDON: Printed fey COOKE &Co., 23, Queen's BuiuuNGb, Old Bailey, E.C 1886. I y> T'K •(¦ HOUSE OF WAYLAND. Wblond, or the Smith, was the Valcan of northern my thology ;that is to say, it was a genoric term, a symbo licalimpersonation standing for a skilled artificer, derived from some Scandinavian verb, signifying to work with ingenuity, (and perhaps surviving in the English term "to- weld") as Doedalus among the Greeks was derived from ScudaXXoi to work artistically, and Fabricius in Latin from fdbrico. Itwas in this sense that King Alfredunderstood it when in his translation of Boethius's Be consolation* philosophic," he thus paraphrased the passage commencing Übinuncfidelis" ossa Fabricii manent ?" Where are now the bones of the wise Weland The goldsmith formerly so famous P ... " Under what tumulus do they liehidden ? So also the French romancers were fond of attributing: the armour of Charlemagne and other warriors to the skill of Weland, or "Galannus" as they would call hinu Matthew Paris is but adopting the same poetic fiction when ce informs us that among the suit of arms presented by Henry 1. of England to the young Count Geoffrey oi Anjou, the sword was of Weland's superlative manufacture* Hist.xii.521. And in the same symbolic strain, other me dieval writers have furnished with weapons from this- armory, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Ptolemy, Judas- Maccabeus, and the Emperor Vespasian. In the Yale of White-horse at Ashbury near the borders of Wilts and Berks, may stillbe seen the remains of a Celtic sepulchre or cromleoh bearing the name of Wayland Smith's cave. Though it bears this Saxon name itismuch older than Saxon times, and is just one among many other illustrations of the tendency of that tribe to connect their own traditional legends with the objects which they found on their,arrival in England. Sir Walter Scott has made B 2 use of it in his romance of KenilwortJu At this cave, according to rustic folk-lore; dwelt the invisible smith. No one ever saw him;bnt any traveller who had the courage to avail himself of his skill, had only to deposit a piece of money on one of the 6tones and leave his horse beside it On his return the horse was found to be shod and the money gone. Such was the last shadowy tradition of the venerable myth. Though it might be supposed that from early times "Weland wonld be a favourite surname, nevertheless in the race for popular adoption it has been far outstripped by its synonym Smith. Still we may say that under his more •euphonious appellation, our traditional metallurgist has, with slight verbal variations, continued to hold his ground in every one of the old European tongues. In Iceland he wa« Voelund or Volundur,— in German, Wiolant and Wie lant, —in Anglo-Saxon, Weland and Yelont, modified in modern dialect to Wayland as a name and Valiant as an epithet. In the Latin of— the middle ages, it became Gui landus and Galannus, and in old French, Galans or Galant. When applied to territory, Wayland" might plausibly enough be traced to the Anglo-Saxon Wael," signifying battle, slaughter, or death, and used in forming such com pound phrases as wael-feld, a field of battle ; wael-shaft, a war weapon ;and so wael-land might well designate a place of slaughter. But in our early history the names of persons and places are so interchangable, that we shall gaiu littleby departing from the simple explanation first given above. How Wayland drifted into Waylen among the Wiltshire branches may easily be accounted for by the carelessness which characterizes the spelling of surnames in the middle ages ; the scriveners just following the sounds which their reporters furnished ; though, if there were not good proof that the spelling of Wayland prevailed in the West of England before Waylen was heard of, we might assume the identity of the modern form Waylen withthat of Whelan, which in Ireland where itis common enough, is pronounced Whalan. The final remark to be made under this head is that Wehlen the name of apicturesque town on the Elbe inSaxon Switzerland has a sound exactly similar. 3 The English Waylanda seem to have originally sprang from Norfolk or Suffolk. A shadowy tradition points to a Knight, Sir Herbert Wayland of Wayland in Norfolk, flourishing in that county towards the close of the twelfth century, and having by his wife Beatrix, three sons, one of whom, Sir Thomas, generally known as Chief Justice Wayland, isregarded as the principal ancestor of the various families bearing his name, both in the East and West of England. John Wayland, Esq., now [1860] owning Wood- *Rising and Wood-Eaton, both inNorfolk, believes himself to be a lineal representative of the Chief Justice. Another trace of the family's residence there exists in a woody dis trict between Watton and Merton, bearing the title of Wayland Wood, which the folk-lore of the district has changed into Wailing Wood, and associated with the ballad- tragedy of "The Norfolk gentleman," or "The babes in the wood." Quitting the Norfolk stem, we turn to the branch which spread into the counties of Wilts and Somerset. During the reigns ofEdward the first and second, three contemporary members of the family are here conspicuous, namely Thomas, William,and Richard. Their mutual relationship must at best be conjectural, but some lightis thrown on their social position by a few surviving official documents. And first in respect of,— Thomas de Wayland. His name occurs as witness to a deed of confirmation of privileges granted to the Bishop of Saram, by Edward 1., in 1285, recorded in Hatcher's Hist, iffSalisbury. Of his contemporary, Sib William Wayland, the State- papers preserve the following memoranda. In the 24th Edward 1., he did homage to the King for lands held in right of his wife Elizabeth, daughter and heir of Osbert of Bath. In the 9th of Edward 11., he is styled a lord of the township of Loxton in Somerset, and a feudal holder of part of the township of Compton-Durville in the same county. Later on, he is returned by the Sheriff of Somer set as Knight of the shire to the Parliament meeting 17th Edward 11. ;and in the following year a military patent constitutes him a commissioner of array in that county, '•> withspecial powers. His last promotion is to the Justice &Wo**£*ZZl ti*~.&Jzftrrsf*Aj*-€*' 4 ship of oyer and terminer for the eountieß of Wilts, Somerset, Dorset, Devon, and Cornwall. Kichabd Waylaud, described as of Horsley and Calne* in Wilts,is returned as a burgess to represent the borough of Galne in the Parliament which met at Northampton lsfc of Edward 11. These three names aforesaid, Thomas, William, and" Richard, all re-appear in the chamberlain's accounts of Stanley Abbey near Ghippenham, belonging, like those- first mentioned, to the thirteenth century. In the cata logue of charters and title deeds belonging to the Abbey, occur the following:— " Calna. WillelmideDevyses, clerici qni dicitur Weyland, de redditu XV.solidorum et VII.deoariorum inCalna, quern redditum dedit nobis pro liberatione sua." "Calna. Ricardi filiiWillelmi de Weylande de Calna de acquietancia" liberationis annuae panis et cervisin." Calna. Quieta clamacio Thomoe Weyland de uno tene mento." The above rendered into English :— Ist. The charter of Williamof Devyses, clerk, who is called Weyland, in respeot of the rent of 15 shillings and 7 pence in Calne, which rent he gave to us for his livery. 2nd. The charter of Richard, son of William de Weylande, of Calne for the discharge of his annual livery of bread and beer. Brd. Quit-claim of Thomas Weyland in respect of one tenement there. Two of the last-mentioned, namely Thomas and Richard, are probably identical with Thomas and Richard previously noticed, though such a conjecture cannot be hazarded in respect of William. Sir William the Justiciary of the Western counties cannot possibly be the same person as "William of the Devyses the clerk whois called Weyland.'* In respect of this latter" individual,all we can say of him is that the expression qui dicitur Weyland" seems to point to an early settler, that is tosay, to a person hitherto un known in the town. That he bore some relationship to his distinguished namesake, is not an unreasonable supposition,. —a clerical kinsman, perhaps, following in the West of England the fortunes of the chief man of his house, and eventually rejoicing in some monastic benefice. But hi& ecclesiastical character forbids our regarding him as the 5 ¦ Ancestor of all those of his name who subsequently became land owners inDevizes and Nnrstead. These, itis"believed, are rather tobe derived from Richard described as of Calne and Horsley," —their habitat lying at Rowde Hill, three miles north-west of Devizes, and comprising Darlotts, Stalloroft, and Smythicks. The following names down to the middle of the seventeenth century are principally derived from Mr. Edward Waylen's manuscripts, bat whether or not their sequential relationship can be established, is a •question sharing the obscurity of the dark ages. William Wayland, of Bowde Hill,in the time of Edward HL The forest accounts held before William of Wykeham, 41st Edward III;,record payments made by "William Wilens, of Rowde." Byhis marriage withMaria Pawlet, he had a son John, of whom presently, and a daughter, Elizabeth. Presumably also he was the father of Walter Weyland, rector of Littleton,in Dorset, in1890.

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